I'd love to see this challenged in court. You don't sign any agreements in order to buy the game, and I'll be surprised if there's a TOS that appears whenever you start up the game. Considering that stores generally won't accept returns of video games once the wrapper has been broken, you aren't able to follow TOS instructions to return software if you don't agree to the conditions (unless MS starts directly offering refunds... lol).

What's next, Faber-Castell prohibiting you from making a profit on stories written or sketches drawn using their pencils?

Does that mean that any gaming company that actively posts videogame reviews to YouTube, like IGN and GameSpot who get some revenue from youtube by being partners, won't be able to post their reviews? Or if they do, limit their video content to publicly available trailers and such contain none of their own gameplay experiences? Or would even using the trailers bring up a microsoft red flag?

I'm confused as to whether this would affect us in Australia? We have good copyright laws here, unlike those of you in the USA. We're allowed to use clips of video games, tv shows, and movies for Entertainment and Parody purposes.

That's legislation, and can't be overruled by a contract. Nor is US law enforceable here in Australia.

Not sure whether this would apply when income is being made off the video in question? Any other Aussies know what i'm talking about?

My suggestion. Machinima makers move to Aus (of course you have to put up with our 3rd world standard internet).

After being on the fence about Halo 4 for a while, I think this is reason to not buy the game. This is clearly nonsensical because the money those YouTube partners make is drawn from advertisements not Microsoft.

Also being a fan of RoosterTeeth and Achievement Hunter, I wonder how this will effect them. Will there be any Red Vs Blue shot using Halo 4? Will there be any Achievement Hunter videos detailing Easter eggs and of course achievements? Will there be any GameFail footage from Halo 4 posted?

Jedd Crilly:I'm confused as to whether this would affect us in Australia? We have good copyright laws here, unlike those of you in the USA. We're allowed to use clips of video games, tv shows, and movies for Entertainment and Parody purposes.

That's legislation, and can't be overruled by a contract. Nor is US law enforceable here in Australia.

Not sure whether this would apply when income is being made off the video in question? Any other Aussies know what i'm talking about?

My suggestion. Machinima makers move to Aus (of course you have to put up with our 3rd world standard internet).

I have a hunch their might be some clauses in those copyright laws that refer to making money from someone else's creation, surely? Its too obvious a question to go unanswered in the laws with a small sub section?

But i think you've hit the nail on the head - it might not come down to company location but more the location of the servers where content was hosted.

(similar example of the radical Muslim cleric abuhamza (SP?) recently getting deported from the UK for hosting an extremist website. Despite residing and carrying out the crimes in the UK, the website was hosted on an American server, so the Americans want to prosecute him.)

gigastar:But... for what convcieveable reason would Microsoft pull that? Theres no gain for them at all, even if they profited from it through lawsuits against Google and the YouTube Partners its going to be on a big enough scale that alot of people will be pissed off.

I mean, whether intentional or not, its policy is aimed at people who have the eyes and ears of the entire gaming community. One video from any one content creator in YouTube Partners can set 100000 people against Microsoft within a day.

What are they thinking?

Korten12:I am pretty sure Youtube in general doesn't let you make money off of gameplay videos, pretty sure Machinima and things like MLG (which already said they're uneffected) have deals.

Actually, they do.

In the event that you make a YouTube channel that gains a fairly high level of consistent traffic, you might be offered to join the YouTube Partners program. If you join the program, Google will pay you a cut of the advertisement revenue made from your channel as incentive for you to keep your audience coming back and generating more ad revenue, which the channel host will benefit from.

Personally i dont know what kind of living one could make off that, but as it definitely scales up with your channel traffic, id imagine its plenty enough to make a decent living.

On YouTube, the monetization agreement EXPRESSLY PROHIBITS enabling monetization of game videos.

Tiamat666:Youtube is owned by Google. Microsoft doesn't like Google. Lots of Halo videos on Youtube mean lots of advertising revenue for Google. I suppose MS has a plan to shift control of video game content off Youtube and onto a more MS-friendly platform.

Expecting them to somehow "pull" enough people off Youtube to go to another service is like trying to collect dirt in the middle of monsoon season. Even if they had the drive to open up a competing service (seeing as most of their gaming/media ventures besides the Xbox are miserable failures), they would be trying to pull content from a service that uploads 60 hours of video every second.

There's no way they're going to be able to enforce a statute like that. Even the heaviest copyright enforcers miss hundreds, if not thousands, of videos with copyrighted material. Any money they would have saved removing clips is going to go into maintaining a content/legal team to remove violations - what's the point?

If nothing else, this is only going to serve to make MS look like Rockstar Games, who are notoriously stringent regarding their material being placed online (to the point that anyone who posts material of their games in the first couple post-release days gets hit with copyright strikes).

Tiger Sora:But. But, this doesn't affect me, nor 99.9% of anyone else. So a few dozen youtubers have lost their revenue streams. Now they have to get real jobs like regular people.

That's trivializing it. There are fair use laws that can be applied to Youtube users who post playthroughs/LP's with their own commentary. Youtube has generally erred on the side of the consumer, and has pretty much destroyed most of the major content providers who've sued them.

The only thing this will accomplish is making MS have pie on their faces.

This is incredibly short-sighted on Microsoft's part. They may have just put a massive dent into an area of YouTube that would serve as free advertising for Halo 4. There's plenty of other games to play, YouTube commentators will just go elsewhere.

Of course, how dickish this is towards YouTube partners goes without saying.

If that was the case, companies like Machinima and Mahalo Games would have been shut down by Youtube long ago. As I said earlier, there are certain avenues you can use to get around that agreement, most notably if you're contributing commentary or posting an educational walkthrough. Youtube has generally looked the other way when it comes to these matters, and has given those companies leeway to get away with posting walkthroughs and release-day footage from just about every major developer, via their monetization program.

You can bet if MS tries to shut down Machinima, gamers everywhere will go into histronics as a result. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Well it's certainly swinging the cucumber in the face of those (You)tubers [Vegetable joke].

But. But, this doesn't affect me, nor 99.9% of anyone else. So a few dozen youtubers have lost their revenue streams. Now they have to get real jobs like regular people. That sucks cause I know what it's like to have a super easy job, but, real life sucks.

You'd be hard pressed to find someone making money to live on by doing gameplay montages. LPers with huge fan bases are the ones making the money not Ultra leet headshots 2012 (feat. Skrillex Bangarang).

I'm sure they have 'real jobs' just like 'regular people'. Whatever that means.

If that was the case, companies like Machinima and Mahalo Games would have been shut down by Youtube long ago. As I said earlier, there are certain avenues you can use to get around that agreement, most notably if you're contributing commentary or posting an educational walkthrough. Youtube has generally looked the other way when it comes to these matters, and has given those companies leeway to get away with posting walkthroughs and release-day footage from just about every major developer, via their monetization program.

You can bet if MS tries to shut down Machinima, gamers everywhere will go into histronics as a result. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

The groups you're referring to aren't simply posting game videos and monetizing them. There is also no difference in presentation between a monetized or non-monetized video, so you have no idea which videos are making them money and which are not.

Congratulations Microsoft, you just screwed over Let's Players who make a living by playing your games since. This is why I really don't like Microsoft at all anymore, they try to really snuff out anything that might not get them money. While it doesn't affect me as I don't monetize I'm gonna love seeing how they try to go after sites like Machinima or other sites that have partnerships with LPers and are under contract. In the end Microsoft will most likely suffer greatly for this.

If that was the case, companies like Machinima and Mahalo Games would have been shut down by Youtube long ago. As I said earlier, there are certain avenues you can use to get around that agreement, most notably if you're contributing commentary or posting an educational walkthrough. Youtube has generally looked the other way when it comes to these matters, and has given those companies leeway to get away with posting walkthroughs and release-day footage from just about every major developer, via their monetization program.

You can bet if MS tries to shut down Machinima, gamers everywhere will go into histronics as a result. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

The groups you're referring to aren't simply posting game videos and monetizing them.

Yes, they are. That's their entire business model - people who are brought on as Machinima partners are generally picked up because they have an established audience. Their videos are monetized according to a in-house algorithm that pays out both the company and the player. They've been doing this for several years, and are pretty much the biggest independent gaming company on Youtube. They get invited to exclusive events, get tons of pre-release footage, etc...it's all monetized.

I'd bet you that if Machinima came out tomorrow with a video telling people not to buy Halo 4 because of Microsoft's stance, the entire MS legal team would be called up to their head office and yelled at. They are arguably responsible for a large part of the ongoing fandom of the series - threatening to sue anyone if they post gameplay footage would put a serious damper in their company, and there's no way they'd take that lying down.

Well if that's the case how are channels like Yogscast and TotalBiscuit allowed then? TotalBiscuit has almost a million subscribers and Yogscast even more.

Uploading a video to YouTube != enabling monetization for that video.

Which is why I intentionally used channels that I knew were partnered so were making money off video game videos. I used those examples deliberately because the size of their subscriber base means they make a lot of money.

Well if that's the case how are channels like Yogscast and TotalBiscuit allowed then? TotalBiscuit has almost a million subscribers and Yogscast even more.

Uploading a video to YouTube != enabling monetization for that video.

TB does get monetisation for his videos, in fact in a recent video he explicitly stated that his only source of regular income is the money coming in from his videos. And according to him its enough that he doesnt need to find a regular job.

You can post videos you just can't make money from it. It's a little unfair to make money from someone else's IP in my opinion. Just because they are a big corporation doesn't mean they shouldn't have rights to their IP.

To me it's a fair compromise. People making these videos don't do it to advertise the games, they do it to share the game playing experience. In fact I would go out of my way NOT to watch a let's play series or multi-player matches made by someone just doing it for profit.

Better this than a blanket ban on all videos. It means hobby videos makers can still do what they love

gigastar:But... for what convcieveable reason would Microsoft pull that? Theres no gain for them at all, even if they profited from it through lawsuits against Google and the YouTube Partners its going to be on a big enough scale that alot of people will be pissed off.

I mean, whether intentional or not, its policy is aimed at people who have the eyes and ears of the entire gaming community. One video from any one content creator in YouTube Partners can set 100000 people against Microsoft within a day.

What are they thinking?

Korten12:I am pretty sure Youtube in general doesn't let you make money off of gameplay videos, pretty sure Machinima and things like MLG (which already said they're uneffected) have deals.

Actually, they do.

In the event that you make a YouTube channel that gains a fairly high level of consistent traffic, you might be offered to join the YouTube Partners program. If you join the program, Google will pay you a cut of the advertisement revenue made from your channel as incentive for you to keep your audience coming back and generating more ad revenue, which the channel host will benefit from.

Personally i dont know what kind of living one could make off that, but as it definitely scales up with your channel traffic, id imagine its plenty enough to make a decent living.

Yes, Freddie Wong makes some decent cash from YouTube. Obviously there are other funding sources for Freddie, but only AFTER he became YouTube famous.

Korten12:I am pretty sure Youtube in general doesn't let you make money off of gameplay videos, pretty sure Machinima and things like MLG (which already said they're uneffected) have deals.

Actually, they do.

In the event that you make a YouTube channel that gains a fairly high level of consistent traffic, you might be offered to join the YouTube Partners program. If you join the program, Google will pay you a cut of the advertisement revenue made from your channel as incentive for you to keep your audience coming back and generating more ad revenue, which the channel host will benefit from.

Personally i dont know what kind of living one could make off that, but as it definitely scales up with your channel traffic, id imagine its plenty enough to make a decent living.

I think Korten might be right, I was offered to join the YouTube Partners program as one of my videos has just under half a million views, but then eventually wasn't accepted as my videos used "copyrighted materials", mainly Nintendo characters. Certainly at the time I was offered, footage from copyrighted media wasn't allowed as part of the Partners program.

Storm Dragon:This is idiotic! How do gamers making a few bucks off of these videos harm Microsoft in any way?

Because companies do not like to compete anymore. Nor do they like the idea of some average joe making 50 bucks a month off their free advertising of microsoft's product that gets hundreds of thousands of views.

Honestly I believe the next step of advertising was these type of youtube videos that showed great gameplay instead of spending millions on these crappy and useless commercials that people just ignore anyways.

I'm not going to boycott Halo 4 because of this, there is no need. I'm just going to buy the game used so microsoft gets 0 bucks. For me it's the best FU I can offer because I still get to enjoy the game and they see no profits. :)

Korten12:I am pretty sure Youtube in general doesn't let you make money off of gameplay videos, pretty sure Machinima and things like MLG (which already said they're uneffected) have deals.

Actually, they do.

In the event that you make a YouTube channel that gains a fairly high level of consistent traffic, you might be offered to join the YouTube Partners program. If you join the program, Google will pay you a cut of the advertisement revenue made from your channel as incentive for you to keep your audience coming back and generating more ad revenue, which the channel host will benefit from.

Personally i dont know what kind of living one could make off that, but as it definitely scales up with your channel traffic, id imagine its plenty enough to make a decent living.

I think Korten might be right, I was offered to join the YouTube Partners program as one of my videos has just under half a million views, but then eventually wasn't accepted as my videos used "copyrighted materials", mainly Nintendo characters. Certainly at the time I was offered, footage from copyrighted media wasn't allowed as part of the Partners program.

Korten may be right but im all too aware that exceptions exist in the system. One prominent example ive already brought up is TotalBiscuit, who makes and uploads at least 2 videos of game footage, commentary and review every weekday, and yet is a Partner and thats his only source of income according to the man himself.

I still don't think this is the driving force? Maybe a contributing factor with the Xbox dash having adverts on it?

Granted its convenient, but i fail to see any connections between IGN, YouTube, independently recorded Halo gameplay and MS in that.

That aside, the app is just another redundancy for Xbox users, anyone with an tablet, laptop, desktop or smartphone can access IGN just fine to read articles and in most cases watch videos.

Agreed. This might have had more merit as a move of control of how to access content for the sake of add revenue if their weren't a dozen other ways to get it whilst still using the Xbox.

This is another step back for microsoft, they have to accept that with the number of devices on the market that allow users to access content easily on demand, the Xbox won't become the central media hub of the home as they were hoping and i think smartglass is a late change to a broken concept that wont really help.

I still don't think this is the driving force? Maybe a contributing factor with the Xbox dash having adverts on it?

Granted its convenient, but i fail to see any connections between IGN, YouTube, independently recorded Halo gameplay and MS in that.

That aside, the app is just another redundancy for Xbox users, anyone with an tablet, laptop, desktop or smartphone can access IGN just fine to read articles and in most cases watch videos.

Agreed. This might have had more merit as a move control of how to access content for the sake of add revenue if their weren't a dozen other ways to get it whilst still using the Xbox.

This is another step back for microsoft, they have to accept that with the number of devices on the market that allow users to access content easily on demand, the Xbox won't become the central media hub of the home as they were hoping and i think smartglass is a late change to a broken concept that wont really help.

So to use the political metaphor for this, MS is like the Republican party. Slow to change and it tries to force everyone to wait for it to catch up?

As I mentioned in the Halo community thread, these rules actually haven't really changed, and even the updated and clarified text has been up there for months. I assume somebody just noticed this and posted this morning because it sort of blew up. This has always been the Legal status for the IP (and MOST IPs in fact), and as you also already know, nobody is being sued, or in jail, etc etc etc.

The language isn't designed to stop kids streaming their games, or covering their costs, it's designed to stop big companies from using somebody else's IP to run a business.

We'll put together some language that will help community people navigate this easily, and give people workarounds.

Hazy992:Well if that's the case how are channels like Yogscast and TotalBiscuit allowed then? TotalBiscuit has almost a million subscribers and Yogscast even more.

Uploading a video to YouTube != enabling monetization for that video.

TB does get monetisation for his videos, in fact in a recent video he explicitly stated that his only source of regular income is the money coming in from his videos. And according to him its enough that he doesnt need to find a regular job.

And I'm sure he monetizes the videos without first obtaining the rights necessary to do so from the developers.

Granted its convenient, but i fail to see any connections between IGN, YouTube, independently recorded Halo gameplay and MS in that.

That aside, the app is just another redundancy for Xbox users, anyone with an tablet, laptop, desktop or smartphone can access IGN just fine to read articles and in most cases watch videos.

Agreed. This might have had more merit as a move control of how to access content for the sake of add revenue if their weren't a dozen other ways to get it whilst still using the Xbox.

This is another step back for microsoft, they have to accept that with the number of devices on the market that allow users to access content easily on demand, the Xbox won't become the central media hub of the home as they were hoping and i think smartglass is a late change to a broken concept that wont really help.

So to use the political metaphor for this, MS is like the Republican party. Slow to change and it tries to force everyone to wait for it to catch up?